In This Week’s Pop-culture Round-up: From ‘Jigra’ Easter Eggs to a Filmmaker’s Wine

This is the first in The Hollywood Reporter India’s ‘Pop-Culture Digest’ series, a fortnightly catch-up on what’s hot in entertainment.

Spotting Easter eggs in a film is a thrilling sport for movie geeks. I imagine it’s equally fun for filmmakers who use it to tease fans by slipping in secret hat tips to other films or paying homage to the artists who influenced them. Alfred Hitchcock would famously make fleeting appearances as an extra in his own movies. Closer home, director Sriram Raghavan is a master at artfully inserting clues in his films and their posters. 

Filmmaker Vasan Bala is also big on peppering his films with Easter eggs. His latest Jigra, released earlier in October, is no different. There are obvious tributes to Amitabh Bachchan and his iconic films that are impossible to miss. The film was also released on the actor’s 82nd birthday, which was perhaps a coincidence. 

But Easter eggs are most fun when they pop up unexpectedly for a split second, almost to check if you’re still paying attention. So, when in the middle of a tense action scene in Jigra, a mobile phone lights up, and the caller is Robert Rodriguez (name of an American filmmaker and composer), it puts a smile on your face. Or even when a young boy complains that he’s being bullied by Ranjeet, Amrish and Jeevan — Hindi cinema’s greatest villains. There are many such clever references in Jigra, and if you haven’t watched the movie yet, go see how many you can spot and put your movie-nerd credentials to the test.

On that note, here’s what happened in pop culture this fortnight. 

Rajkummar Rao’s League of Talented Common Men 

Rajkummar Rao has aced the art of imbuing heroism and whimsy into seemingly uncinematic professions. For every hyper-masculine cop, spy and thug dominating our stories, he gives us a talented mechanic, tailor or waiter who feels no pressure to be larger than life in order to be taken seriously. In Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video, the other film that was released with Jigra, he plays a uniquely skilled mehndi artist from Rishikesh who can paint with both his hands at the same time. This isn’t his best work and will probably get lost in his otherwise formidable filmography. But I always look forward to seeing how the actor is going to add a zing to these common-man professions. 

In Stree (2018), he’s a genius tailor of women’s garments in the small town of Chanderi who takes measurements without touching women. He has a spotless track record of never having a garment returned to him for alterations. He’s called ‘dil ka darzee’ (tailor of the heart) or ‘Chanderi ka Manish Malhotra’ with good reason. In Anurag Basu’s Ludo (2020), he’s Alok Kumar Gupta or Aloo, a dhaba owner who knows how to take an order in style. Aloo can rattle off an entire menu to customers while impersonating Mithun Chakraborty’s dance moves. He has a sweet backstory; he was initially a Bachchan fan but shifted loyalties because his childhood crush was a Mithun da supporter. And then there’s Tipu, from Raj and DK’s series Guns & Gulaabs (2023), who is gifted in a twisted way. Tipu is a small-time mechanic who gains notoriety for how skillfully he can murder people with a humble spanner. I hope writers can find new and inventive ways to let Rao add sheen to these professions before the trope gets too repetitive.  

A Free Ticket to Hollywood 

Meanwhile, influencers, too, are having a moment on screen. Vikramaditya Motwane’s CTRL on Netflix and The Tribe on Amazon Prime Video, both of which were released on the same day, make for the perfect double bill. If you’re considering becoming an influencer, between Motwane’s thriller and Dharmatic’s reality show, you get a well-rounded understanding of where life can take you. You can either end up in jail or in a Los Angeles mansion. The latter is for five Mumbai-bred women influencers in The Tribe. They are “living their best lives and posting about it”. 

The person who baffled me endlessly on the show, however, was the man funding this life — Hardik Zaveri. Zaveri is a South Mumbai Gujarati businessman whose bank account is clearly a bottomless pit. He watched the TV show Entourage while growing up, and decided that’s the life he wants. Zaveri magnanimously spends ‘millions’ on flying down mid-sized influencers to lounge in an Instagrammable LA villa, and go on expensive vacations. He hasn’t bothered drawing up contracts or setting deliverables, because that’s no fun. He spouts gems like, “I see money as this token that you need to play the game of life.”

The talents he’s picked are too lazy to do basic things like post photos and videos — the bare minimum required of an influencer. Two other musician friends he’s bankrolling in LA turn up an hour late for the one gig they land. It’s nine episodes of Zaveri burning money like it's going out of fashion. 

I have so many questions: who is this guy? What sort of a business plan is this? How much money has he sunk on this experiment? And most importantly, how can I become his friend? If there’s a second season, I want answers. 

Coppola’s Wine Saves the Day

Earlier this month, actor Ranbir Kapoor announced the launch of his lifestyle brand ARKS, joining a long list of Bollywood celebrities running their own beauty and clothing companies. A recent report by Storyboard18 revealed that the two actors acing the game are Hrithik Roshan — who co-owns the fitness brand HRX — and Katrina Kaif, who founded the cosmetics company, Kay Beauty. Cricketer Virat Kohli’s youth fashion brand WROGN and Deepika Padukone’s skincare brand 82°E witnessed slower growth. The report suggests that Indian celebrities rely too heavily on their fame to do the work and less on a solid business strategy, which is why many of them fail. 

Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) recently made a great case for why celebrities should pay more attention to honing their entrepreneurial skills. Last month, the 85-year-old filmmaker finally released his expensive passion project, Megalopolis, which he’s been developing since the 1980s. The film was dead on arrival. It’s the kind of epic box-office disaster that could destroy a studio. Except, no lives were hurt here because Coppola self-financed the movie.

In 2021, the filmmaker sold a part of his hugely profitable winery business in a $500 million deal, so that he could spend $140 million on producing and marketing his dream film without any creative intervention from suits. While discussions on the artistic merits of Megalopolis are polarising, it’s certain that Coppola is never going to see those millions again, and he’s not complaining.  

Unmasking Superhero Movies   

Speaking of artistic merits, several filmmaking giants, including Coppola, have often repeated that Marvel superhero movies are devoid of any. Martin Scorsese famously called these box-office money spinners “theme park” movies. Ridley Scott said they are “boring as sh*t”. In a new HBO series, The Franchise, filmmaker Sam Mendes has taken this collective pain and turned it into art. Created by Armando Iannucci (Veep) and Jon Brown (Succession), the show goes all out in lampooning comic book movies by taking us inside the chaotic set of a fictional film called “Tecto”. Tecto is on its 34th day of shoot; it’s already grossly over budget and is fast losing its standing amongst the numerous other assembly-line superhero movies manufactured by the studio. 

No one is spared, and it’s evident that the makers of this satire are on team Scorsese. We get a dreaded Kevin Feige-ish (President of Marvel Studios) studio boss, a veteran theatre actor who is there just for the paycheque, an arthouse director trying his best to intellectualise the silly plot, and an assistant director who calls himself the “world’s most thankless superhero”. They’re all in misery, and it’s lovely to watch. The show is streaming on JioCinema.